


funnily enough

by Belgium



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 00:45:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3589935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belgium/pseuds/Belgium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," according to Shakespeare, but Tobio really hates the way Oikawa-san says his name. Post-canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	funnily enough

**Author's Note:**

> for jen, ~congrats on finishing college~ ~i'm so proud~ ~now you have to write me oikage~

Other than his parents, Oikawa-san is the only person on earth that calls Tobio _Tobio_. Tobio feels deeply conflicted about it. On one hand, what’s in a name? It was just three syllables, probably easier and faster to say than _Kageyama_ , but on the other hand…

On the other hand, it was _annoying_. Oikawa-san’s voice naturally had that sing-song, patronizing lilt that grinded on Tobio’s nerves. Tobio wanted to tell him that the intonation was all wrong, that his name didn’t end in a goddamn question mark, but there was no way of getting that across. He couldn’t just shout it out during the middle of a match (maybe it _would_ be cool if they were in a position to joust for the ball and if Oikawa-san said, “Give it up, To-bi- _oooh?_ ” and if Tobio suddenly slammed down the ball and growled, “ _That’s not my name, Oikawa-san_ ,” and Sugawara-san and maybe the other third years, too, would be so proud of him getting the point). Besides, Oikawa-san’s high school volleyball career was over, and Tobio couldn’t think of any reason why Karasuno would play Aoba Jousai any time soon, now that the season was done.

It made Tobio feel a little bit empty. He had played without Oikawa-san for two years back in middle school so he was used to the absence of Oikawa-san’s overwhelming magnetism, and Karasuno was his team—his _home_ —now, so that wasn’t the problem. Maybe it was the fact that Tobio had started to associate Oikawa-san with his own personal growth, so it was little disheartening to know that there would be yet another two year gap between them. They would never be on the same level.

Sugawara-san is the one who brings it up at the end of the year club party.

“Sugawara-san,” Tobio asks during their setter-to-setter heart-to-heart, ignoring the fact that Sugawara-san had been giving increasingly desperate pleading glances at Daichi-san and Asahi-san for an escape route for the last ten minutes, “are you going to continue to play volleyball in university?”

“That’s a good question,” Sugawara-san replies with all the patience in the world. “I want to, but my planned coursework is a lot heavier than I expected it to be. Eventually I want to go to medical school, but at this point of my life, anything is possible… And who knows if I’ll make the team?”

Sugawara-san is so smart and humble that Tobio presses even further.

“You’ll make the team,” he assures. “Even if you might not play in all the games, you’ll definitely make it. You have your strengths, like thinking critically and receiving. Your spikes are subpar and you’re not very tall and you get tired easily, so I don’t know about that. And maybe you’re not a very offense-orientated setter, so that’s what might make them hesitate a little. But still.”

“Thank you, Kageyama,” Sugawara-san says, more dryly than Tobio had expected. Maybe it was something he’d said? “But I’m not as good as tossing and receiving and thinking critically and spiking and running as Aoba Jousai’s Oikawa.”

This makes Tobio freeze in his tracks.

“Who said anything about Oikawa-san?” he demands pushily.

“Ahh, you didn’t know?” Sugawara-san smiles. “We’re going to the same school.”

“In Tokyo?”

“That’s right.”

“You and Oikawa-san?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Tobio scowls. “Of the fifty universities in Tokyo, Oikawa-san _had_ to go to the same one as Sugawara-san?”

“There are actually more than one hundred and twenty universities in Tokyo, not counting junior colleges,” Sugawara-san gently corrects him. “But yes. He was offered an athletic scholarship, I think. Isn’t life one enormous coincidence?”

Tobio can see how life is one enormous coincidence and agrees that it is, but that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it. Honestly, it seemed like Oikawa-san only lived to play volleyball and to torment Tobio and everyone around him, and more often than not, it was _by_ playing volleyball that he tormented them.

“Okay,” he finally concedes, accepting the inevitable.

“Okay,” Sugawara-san softly echoes. “I’m sure Oikawa isn’t a bad person to be on the same team with.”

“You have no idea what it’s like,” Tobio laments. _Wait a minute._ “Wait a minute. Sugawara-san—”

“I can’t promise anything,” he plows on bravely, “and you can’t promise anything either, Kageyama, but you’re right. It’d be a shame not to at least try.” Sugawara-san grins. “Maybe I’ll play Daichi for the first time? It might be fun. Although, after being vice captain this year, it’ll be weird as a first year again…” Sugawara-san looks at him. “But it’s good to push yourself. It’d be nice to start over. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

To start over.

In volleyball, every new season was a new start. Every team was different; you would never play with the same people two years in a row. It’s something that Tobio liked and disliked all at once. There was no telling what the new first years would be like, if they were good or not, and if they were bad then it was up to the program to fix that—but if they were _good_ , like he and Hinata were this year, then maybe it would be a total game changer. Even if the leadership from one particular year was strong, it was possible that everything would fall apart the next. The second years step up, but the third years leave their legacy behind.

There was no sense of permanence in this world, Tobio thinks. Everything was constantly changing. Not even hate, anger, jealousy—the deepest emotions—remained the same.

-

To say that Tobio had forgiven Oikawa-san might have been a stretch, but at least Tobio doesn’t think about him so vehemently anymore.

Well, maybe that was a stretch, too. Sometimes Tobio found himself sitting in class and suddenly remembering how Oikawa-san was horrible and selfish to him in middle school when all Tobio wanted was to learn how to serve like his senpai and his pencil would snap clean in two. He keeps these pencils at the bottom of his book bag because it was embarrassing to get up and throw them out in the middle of a lecture.

Of course, _Hinata_ , of all the people in the world, is the one to find out about it.

“Kageyama, why do you have all these broken pencils?” Hinata asks him during a lunch break.

“Don’t worry about it,” he answers tightly. “I just have an iron grip.”

“Man, setters are on a whole ‘nother level,” Hinata breathes. Tobio’s eyebrow quirks but he says nothing. “What are you doing in class right now? Is this literature?”

“Why? Are you planning to switch into 1-3?”

“What’s with your attitude? Am I not allowed to know?”

“What I’m learning is none of your business, dumbass Hinata!”

Hinata grins teasingly at him. “Why are you so defensive? Is it because you’re failing, Kageyama? I bet it’s because you have like a 40 in the class.”

Tobio scowls so deeply he can already feel the wrinkles forming near his mouth. “I do not have a _40_ in the class,” he retorts. “I am passing with a 56, thank you.” It was actually a 55, but what Hinata didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Tobio pauses. It wouldn’t hurt him, but Hinata would keep pestering him to his grave. “We’re doing _Romeo and Juliet_ ,” he says reluctantly.

“Ah!” Hinata perks up and recites melodramatically, a hand draped delicately over his forehead, “‘ _A rose with any name would look just as pretty_ —”

“It’s actually _A rose by any other name would smell as sweet_ , dumbass!”

“Same difference,” Hinata protests. “It just means that no matter what your name is, you’re still you.” He sticks his tongue out. “So even if you call me a dumbass all the time, I’ll have you know that Sugawara-san _always_ gives me nice compliments whenever I spike one of his tosses, so who’s the real winner here?”

Tobio reaches over to jab Hinata in his side, but Hinata dances out of reach, cackling.

“Just wait until Sugawara-san graduates in a few weeks,” Tobio threatens darkly. “You’ll never get a compliment from a setter again.”

“Kageyama is so cold-hearted and rude!” Hinata announces to all of 1-3 before dashing out of his pilfered seat, leaving Tobio to glare at any curious passerby. They leave him alone immediately. Not for the first time, Tobio thinks about how lucky he was to have been born with his face, how it intimidated his opponents and annoying classmates alike.

He thinks about Oikawa-san, too, after. It wasn’t as if Tobio was actually going to pay attention in class any time soon; Hinata had gotten him too fired up to analyze Shakespeare—although he was in a way, sort of. Oikawa-san had the kind of smile that drew you in, but it was so superficial. He said things specifically to get reactions out of people; it was how he got all those numbers from his fans, by being sweet to them. Tobio recalls the way Oikawa-san called Iwaizumi-san sickeningly sweet nicknames, too, and tries to think about the way Oikawa-san says his name.

It was always just _Tobio_ , he realizes sullenly. No decorations, besides Oikawa-san’s meandering way of talking. Sometimes if Oikawa-san _really_ wanted to be mean it was _Tobio-chan_ , but never anything weird. Tobio liked his name; it was plain and strong and it suited him, but strangely, he felt the disappointment—disappointment from _what_ , exactly?—settle into the pit of his stomach.

It wasn’t as if Oikawa-san would be any less or more irritating whether he’d made up a weird nickname for Tobio or just kept calling him To-bi- _oooh?_ A rose is a rose, Tobio thinks, angrily shoving yet another broken pencil into his bag, and Oikawa-san’s rose by any other name would be just as annoying.

-

Funnily enough, even if you’ve effaced the memory of something from your mind, your body probably won’t forget it.

It’s simply amazing, Tobio thinks dryly, what you can do when you’re on autopilot. All he’d wanted after an excruciating, particularly grueling day of practice (Ennoshita-san deeply hated them all, he’d decided after exchanging a long-suffering glance with Hinata) was a convenience store run for some yoghurt, but somehow on the walk home he’d ended up in front of Oikawa-san’s house.

It looked exactly the same as he remembered it in middle school. There were small pink flowers blooming in the front yard from the early spring warmth and the shutters looked recently repainted. If Tobio remembered correctly, Oikawa-san’s room was on the second floor, first window on the left, and looked out towards a small park bordering the neighborhood. Tobio used to be jealous of Oikawa-san’s idyllic house before he had realized that it was Oikawa-san _himself_ that he was jealous of.

Now, he’s not so sure.

Tobio doesn’t know if what lingers is jealousy as he abruptly about-faces, gently swinging his bag of yoghurt in time with his long-legged strides as he treks home. Certainly there was a degree of it in middle school, but the last time he and Oikawa-san played on a team together was four years ago. Kitagawa Daiichi’s team wasn’t the same anymore, not ever since they left. And Tobio was no longer the same person anymore, either, and neither was Oikawa-san.

He wishes feelings were more like volleyball. There was a clear goal in volleyball—victory, of course—but with _feelings_ there was this ominous, nerve-wracking open-endedness that Tobio didn’t know how to approach.

It makes Tobio cranky, even long after he stress drinks three of his yoghurts walking down familiar neighborhood streets and shoves the rest into his fridge. He stomps heavily up the stairs and pushes his bedroom door open with his foot, tumbling headfirst into bed. The volleyball in the corner of his room, his Karasuno uniform for this year proudly displayed on his closet door, his old Kitagawa Daiichi jersey buried in the back of his dresser—he realizes that, as simple as those things were, they all tied him back to Oikawa-san, that there was a deep, unbreakable link between them that Tobio didn’t know if he wanted, didn’t know where to even _start_ making heads or tails of it.

-

In hindsight, Tobio had made up his mind a long time ago. It was, frankly, a stupid plan—half-baked at best, as he’d come up with it when he was daydreaming during his literature class.

Ennoshita-san was always saying that Tobio only used his brain during volleyball and that he should think outside the box more, whatever that was supposed to mean, but Tobio respects his senpai enough to take into heart and apply it to his non-situation with Oikawa-san. Grumpily, Tobio thinks that Ennoshita-san didn’t have to be so ruthless about it; Sugawara-san used to say that Tobio was _kinesthetically intelligent_ , which sounded much nicer. But if Tobio had learned anything this year in class, it was that it didn’t matter how Ennoshita-san or Sugawara-san put it—Tobio was stupid at anything else besides volleyball.

It was true. That’s why Tobio found himself at the gate of Aoba Jousai High School, tightly clutching a bouquet of red roses on a Saturday morning. Despite the beautiful weather, the roses were already wilting in Tobio’s death grip, and Tobio glares at them, as if sheer willpower could make them perk up again. Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tried, Tobio could not communicate with plants, so the roses stay droopy.

Tobio gives up and makes his way to the main gym where the third years’ graduation ceremony was taking place.

Unlike before, sneaking in was simple; all he had to do fall into step with the crowd of nicely dressed parents. Karasuno had held their graduation a few weeks earlier, so it was easy enough for Tobio to pretend that he belonged, though this time Tanaka-san wasn’t crying into the crook of his arm and Hinata and Yamaguchi and Nishinoya-san weren’t cheering obnoxiously when the volleyball third years’ names were called. (Asahi-san had only looked faintly close to tears when he’d spotted the volleyball club clumped in a corner of the room; Daichi-san had just grimly ignored them all. At least Sugawara-san had grinned and waved.)

It took Oikawa-san about fifteen minutes into the ceremony to spot Tobio in the audience. Tobio could tell, because Oikawa-san had been whispering to Iwaizumi-san the entire time, looked up, then did a double take in Tobio’s direction, then went back to Iwaizumi-san as if he’d made Tobio up. Panicked, Tobio kicked his poor roses under the seat in front of him, praying Oikawa-san really believed that he was a hallucination. But later, Oikawa-san meets his eye directly, tilts his head, and sets his mouth into a relaxed line.

When the ceremony ends and most of the third years have already left with their families, Tobio swallows his unease and, roses in hand by his side, marches up to Oikawa-san, who appeared to be waiting for him.

“Oikawa-san,” Tobio says hesitantly, bowing a little, then instantly regrets the bow.

“Ah, Tobio-chan,” Oikawa-san says in that sing-song way that makes Tobio’s stomach twist with—annoyance? Or was it something else? He points to Tobio’s roses. “What’s up with those flowers? Are they for your secret girlfriend?” Oikawa-san mock pouts when he says nothing. “How hurtful! You came all the way here, assault my delicate sensibilities with your _gro-o-oss_ presence, setting me up to think that those roses were for _me_ , your senpai, when really they’re for your girlfriend! Does Karasuno know? Does your mom know? I can’t believe this, To-bi- _oooh?_ ”

Tobio scowls. It takes every ounce of effort in his body to keep from telling Oikawa-san to shut the hell up. He hesitates for a second, but at last he unceremoniously shoves the roses into Oikawa-san’s face and says, “Stop calling me that.”

Oikawa-san says nothing, stunned into silence. That’s a first.

Tobio stubbornly refuses to look up at Oikawa-san, so he stares at his feet and presses on, “Honestly, I hate it. The way you say my name. I want you to stop calling me that.”

A pause. Then, finally: “You want me to stop calling you your name?”

“It’s not…” Tobio scrunches his nose up and tries his best to mimic Oikawa-san. “It’s not To-bi- _oooh?_ , there aren’t any extra _o_ ’s in it. It’s just _Tobio_. To-bi-o.”

“To-bi- _oooh?_ ”

He frowns. “To-bi-o.”

Oikawa-san tries again. “To-bi- _ooh?_ ”

“I hate you,” Tobio says, mostly without heat, still embarrassedly looking down. “Please take these roses, Oikawa-san, or else I’ll have spent my allowance for nothing when I could’ve bought twenty milk boxes instead.”

Nothing happens for a few minutes and Tobio wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but holding up those roses for so long was starting to give him a cramp in his shoulder. But eventually, Oikawa-san gently lifts the flowers from Tobio’s hands as if they were a precious gift instead of cheap, floppy roses, then presses them to his nose, taking a long whiff.

When Tobio finally, _finally_ brings himself to look up, Oikawa-san has a faint, curious smile on his lips.

“Why roses?” he asks. “You know what they mean, right?”

 _Why roses?_ Tobio scoffs. He’d thought Oikawa-san was smart—smart enough to get in a private school, anyway—but then again, Oikawa-san would definitely be someone Ennoshita-san called a volleyball idiot, too.

“It’s _Shakespeare_ ,” Tobio boasts, even though by now, Tobio knew that it wasn’t just quite Shakespeare. “Ennoshita-san—um, #6 last year—uh, our captain—he says that I only think about volleyball and that the rest of my brain will eventually rot away if I don’t start thinking about other things.” Oikawa-san is visibly holding back a laugh, but Tobio doesn’t care anymore. “And Shakespeare says that it doesn’t matter what you call a rose, it’s still going to smell good. _And_ , I don’t have a secret girlfriend,” he adds belatedly.

“ _A rose by any other name would smell as sweet_ ,” Oikawa-san recites theatrically. “ _Romeo and Juliet_. Very tragic.” His smile turns cheeky. “But you know that it means that it doesn’t matter whether I call you To-bi-o or To-bi- _oooh?_ , right? _So_ …”

Tobio bites down his lip so hard it leaves an imprint of his teeth.

“That’s not fair, Oikawa-san,” he tries to argue, but Oikawa-san shakes his head.

“Hey,” he says, not unkindly, “do you like me?”

Tobio freezes. The blood drains out of his face. Did Tobio like Oikawa-san? Was that what all this silliness was, the admiration and disappointment, the fixation on his own name?

It would have been so easy for Tobio to deny it, to walk away from Aoba Jousai and never look back again, to forcibly erase the memory of the roses from his mind. But Oikawa-san is waiting patiently, not looking at him as if he was just a memory of some snot-nosed kid from middle school or even Karasuno’s starting setter, but as just _Tobio_.

“I don’t know,” Tobio finally admits.

“You don’t know?” Oikawa-san repeats amusedly.

“I’ve never… I think… I could…” He stops himself. “Maybe,” he amends, just to be difficult.

“Maybe?”

“What are you, an echo?” Tobio retorts.

Oikawa-san laughs and shifts the roses so that they’re cradled under one arm. “If you ask me, Narcissus and Echo are even more tragic than Romeo and Juliet. But you didn’t, so I won’t say anything.” He makes to leave, picking his messenger bag up off the floor and slinging it over a shoulder. “Thank you for the roses, Tobio.”

The careful way Oikawa-san says his name momentarily stupefies him, so Tobio doesn’t even notice when Oikawa-san gets so close to kiss his cheek. It’s as chaste as it comes, but still, Tobio can feel how his fingertips go numb and the way his stomach flips against his will.

“Is your phone number still the same?” Oikawa-san asks him when he pulls away.

He nods his confirmation, not quite trusting his voice yet.

“Sweet.” Oikawa-san grins at him and jauntily waves. “I’ll see you around, Tobio.” The way he had said it sounded like a promise.

It takes Tobio an embarrassingly long time to peel his feet off the ground after Oikawa-san leaves and an even more embarrassingly long time for him to make his way back home. Nothing had changed, not really, besides _the_ _kiss_ , but Tobio’s room suddenly feels so small.

He touches his cheek.

Permanence doesn’t exist, Tobio thinks as he scoots into bed, drawing the covers up around him. That much was true. To be honest, the possibility of— _whatever_ it was he now had with Oikawa-san made him feel a little wary. It was unfair that Tobio felt like he was going to wait for Oikawa-san forever, that Oikawa-san was about to leave for university, but Tobio was still stuck in high school. If Tobio was going to be honest with himself, they were worlds apart; he was always chasing Oikawa-san.

Still, Tobio dreams of roses.


End file.
